Parent Voices

How To Cuddle Your Teens (And Grown-Up Children)

I fight with my 17-year-old. "Hellcats, both of you", her father says in exasperation. We fight about everything, like two feral cats in a paper bag, in her father's colourful terminology.

Yet I hold her close always. I mean physically close. Especially when words fail me. Our physical closeness nullifies our meaningless fights. Immediately after a shouting match, she would huff at me and tell me I am annoying, but with that slant of a smile in her eyes, building up to a hug that makes everything better between us once again. I will worry the night she goes to sleep without hugging or touching me, or if I could not kiss her cheek, her hair, and feel her melt into me.

I notice this is an oddity, even in Western cultures, to be always touching and hugging one's teenage child. Those who spout attachment parenting in early years are surprisingly non-tactile to their teens. My psychologist friend tells me that there is this belief that the teenage years is about "individuating" a child, that is to say, force them to become self-sufficient.

'Ah," I said. "Be tough to a child in order to raise a tough adult who will be successful in a tough world." I understood. I have seen, first hand, the destructive effect of the mindset that values self-sufficiency and independence above all. I knew one woman who sneered at me, "You still run home to your parents, at your age?" She left her parents as soon as she could, never looked back and I suspect, she would not allow her son the luxury of this "weakness" of coming home to the family, of asking for softness. The son, a qualified pilot, is handsome, healthy and outwardly successful, but he is beset with something inside that made him break off a two year engagement because of fear of commitment rather than flaws in the relationship, have outbreaks on his youthful skin, and being unable to work in a career that he had trained so many years for.

From this example and others, I am convinced that emotional distance and lack of physical bond between grown-up children and parents is not healthy. Our adolescents and young adults still need to hear, feel, and know that we love them and enjoy being with them. Heck, I am almost fifty, and I blossom each time I hear those words! Thus, it feels good for me to be home in my first family's home. I love the fact that sometimes, it seems as if my brothers and I have not yet left home. The closeness remains, despite the miles and the passing time.

Hold your children close, and I mean physically, because sometimes this matters more than words. But how? I hear many ask. Teens are especially prickly to close proximity, especially if they have not been brought up within a touchy-feely framework.

Six ways to cuddle your teen:

Cook unhurriedly together with your teen/grown up child. With cooking, you stand close, work in concerted harmony, learn to anticipate each other's moves and yes, touch.

Rough and tumble. My children's father still wrestles with his grown-up children - I have to remind the children not to be too rough with their old father! He is not 30-years-old anymore!

Do things for each other, such as massage, manicure, reiki.

Cuddle up together on a sofa watching a film. Slowly move closer.

End each night with a goodnight kiss. I miss my mother's "No star" (goodnight in Welsh), the way she touches me gently as she kisses me.